Longing For Past Tense. This is the title of the book I think I am stirred to write. I don’t want to go back or hold on to the past… I just want the struggle I am walking through to be over. I know that I am not alone in these feelings… but the personal struggle has a way of deceiving you. Overall… I am immensely blessed. I am just experiencing so much change that I really feel out of my element. An adventure, you might call it. If I am gonna write about it… it should be as I’m going through it, where possible. It’s stickiest then.
It was suggested to me by a dear friend that I write down this phase of transition in my life. Words on a blog, crazy little poetic pixels proved to be helpful to me and many others in the past as I journaled through the passing of Elizabeth. Why not now? Why not chronicle what it means to remarry? What it means to raise a son or two as your own though they arrived many years into maturity and all instantly at that. What it means to leave my life and cleave to another, another’s, and along with others. What it means to love a whole new approach to things that seem foreign. What it means to loose a job. What it means to feel the loser and the winner in the same stroke. What it means to learn again. What it means to be patient. What it means to be patient. What it means to be patient. (How did you do reading that three times?) What it means to live this new life.
I’ll do it. For me. For my family. For those who would care to look on. And for the Glory of the Lord. Because in the end, it is He that has brought us here. I can take no credit for His master plan. I cannot say that I would have done things His way, but I cannot argue with what He has done through it all. God is good – all the time.
I’ll start with the house. We got one. It’s cute and really quirky (Melissa and Mark, respectively). Basement and an attic. Comfy yet creepy at the same time. For Max, Jonah, and I our new home on Lincoln St. means that we finally feel some sense of “arrival” or settling. I don’t desire to ever feel ‘at home’ in this world, yet I do want to hang my hat in my mission field. We’ve stayed with the greatest of friends and family over this past 15+ months and they’ve been wonderful to us… but it’s nice to be done with suitcase and temporary living. For Ashur and Melissa Lincoln St. means leaving their home and becoming unsettled. These are two totally different perspectives to be coming from… How is it it playing out? Well, it is playing out. After 6 months of being married and 4 months of living here in this 1938 quirk fest of a castle… we are different people. We are changing. We are growing. We are learning to live as a family in ways unfamiliar to us all.
I am still in love… with all four of them. I need a proper date with my wife.
